Leo Season: Drama With Your Phone Service (A Deep Dive Into the “Fine Print”)

August is here, and the sun is firmly planted in Leo—a sign of bold entrances, loud exits, and zero tolerance for BS. To be frank, it gets a bad rep most of the time, but the truth it, when it comes to managing your monthly budget and the services that are draining from it – like your phone service – you should act more like a Leo, shedding light on the drama you didn’t audition for: the sneaky little details your phone carrier conveniently forgot to mention. 

A Guide to Phone Service Fine Print:  

The Illusion of Unlimited  

Almost every carrier offers an Unlimited Data plan, but they’re not all created equally. If you look at the fine print, what you’ll find is one of three things:  

1. The data is truly unlimited (no slowdowns or deprioritization). It usually will be marked as “premium data” and you can expect to find these types of plans from the “Big 3” (AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile).  

1. The data is unlimited but deprioritized. This usually is found with MVNOs (or prepaid carriers) as they lease access to the network from either AT&T, T-Mobile, or Verizon, but at the cost of having their own customers’ data be deprioritized during times of congestion. So, if you live in a larger city and go to events (baseball games, concerts, festivals, etc.) you can expect to have your data run slower during that time.  

1. The data is unlimited but with a high-speed cap. You’ll see that most carriers that offer this kind of plan cap the high-speed data between 20-50GB, and if you use up more data than that, it’ll start slowing down for the remainder of the billing cycle (causing possible video buffering and loading screens when uploading content).  

This type of fine print is the least criminal on our list of shady phone bill business, but it’s still important to recognize and understand the different types of unlimited data plans available – and what you’re willing to pay for.  

 The Introductory Price Trap  

Successful marketing is loud marketing. But that doesn’t make it truthful. Take all those “$15/month for unlimited everything!” claims. When you look into the fine print, you’ll notice that those are just introductory prices (usually for the first 3 months), and the regular price after that is usually more expensive than the next cheapest option, so in the long run, are you really saving?  (cough Mint Mobile cough)

The “Free Phone” That Isn’t  

Ah yes, the “free” phone promo. It sounds like a steal (and it is—you're just the one getting robbed). You’ll be paying it off in tiny instalments for 24-36 months, locked into a plan you’ll hate (or at least hate paying for) by Thanksgiving. Technically, that’s just a payment plan in a cute dress. 

Spoiler: Leo season is about self-worth, not getting tricked into financing a device at 200% markup. 

The Hidden Fees 

Lastly, the fine print we all know about and probably already look for – the hidden fees. Nowadays, they’re at least more readily found, as they’re listed in the “Broadband Fact Sheets” that every carrier has to provide next to their plans. But before you hit “buy,” make sure you add up what that shiny price tag will actually look like after you add on the taxes, the regulatory fees, the activation fees, etc. The actual final number might surprise you.  

Leo season is for taking up space—not giving it away to bloated bills, buried fees, and tech-support circles of hell. The fine print shouldn’t feel like a trapdoor. 

So if your phone service is bringing more drama than value, maybe it’s time to walk out, slam the metaphorical door, and find a provider that treats you like the star you are.